5 tips to avoid family stress during the festive season

With Christmas now less than a month away, most of us have begun our preparations and are probably looking forward to the season with a mixture of excitement and dread. Let’s face it: the festive season is fun but it is also stressful, especially if you are hosting a houseful. There is a wealth of advice on how to manage the seasonal affliction of toxic family syndrome, and here are some of the top tips:

• Accept your family for who they are: do not expect them to change. People don’t. Great Aunt Gladys will still be espousing the same politically incorrect views; Grandpa will still not like the way you cook a turkey and the kids will still get bored and irritating. It doesn’t matter. It’s only for a few days.
• What someone says or does says something about them and nothing about you. So try not to take it personally when inhibitions are lowered and folks misbehave and do your level best to remain calm and smile.
• Set clear boundaries and refuse to be goaded beyond them. If there is a sensitive subject that you do not want to discuss in an open family forum, let them know either before they all arrive or once the principal button presser has moved into action.
• Let bygones be bygones. In any family, people will inevitably have done things that have caused hurt or offence. So remember that to err is human and to forgive is divine. Or just keep thinking about that song from Frozen and “Let It Go”.
• Think positive thoughts. Try taking a leaf out of Vincent Van Gogh’s book and remember that “Whoever loves much, performs much and can accomplish much. What is done in love is done well.” Or, perhaps, as the main agitators shift into full flow think about Abraham Lincoln’s idea: “I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.”

And, when all else fails, leave them all to it and sneak out to your Garden Escape to sit quietly for a while and let it go.